Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Hurricanes

I suppose we experienced our first hurricane yesterday.  We're pretty far in from the shore so we didn't experience too much of what hit the coast but there were a few hours when the winds were pretty crazy.

Twice we ran outside in the storm to attempt to give the animals a little more shelter.

The first time we wrapped a tarp around the back of the chicken run and leaned a piece of plywood up against the box in the run in the hopes that the guinea would go under it and then have the wind blocked from three sides.



We also dragged a folding table and another piece of plywood over to the goats and dragged their houses closer together so that we could give a little shelter outside of their houses so they could stand up.




The second time we ran out to force the rooster and one of the chickens into the coop and to close the door and then to put a red heat lamp out for the guinea since they were all drenched.

From the looks of things this morning, the guinea didn't take advantage of the shelter...






























The goats were dry and I'm sure warmer than those darn birds.  Carrie even looks fluffy this morning.





 I opened the coop for the chickens to come out since it's only very light rain today and I plugged the heat lamp back in (I'd unplugged it around midnight so it wouldn't start a fire while I was sleeping.)

I'm looking to see what stores are open today so that we can go get some higher protein feed and some sand to help absorb some of that nasty water/mud.










Sunday, October 28, 2012

We have more chickens!

Our boys needed more females around (5-8 girls per roosters) and I wanted to have more eggs laid each week so I've been looking into getting more chickens.

I finally found a lady selling five brown chickens for a decent price about twenty minutes away from us.  So we picked them up last week.  They were kept separate from our flock for three days, and then they were allowed in the coop and chicken run with them, but not out to free range.

This morning I went out and caught, pet, and talked to each one, before carrying it out of the chicken run and letting it go to free range with our flock.  They are much friendlier and more calm than our original birds and they seem pretty happy to be out and about today.










Molting

Our champion chicken is molting... her feathers are falling off and they will regrow.  I have never heard of this before so I had to look it up (and asked the vet to confirm the diagnosis when she was out for the goats).  Apparently birds will do this about once a year where they shed their feathers and then need to regrow them.  It takes a lot of energy and so they will stop laying eggs during this time and it can take up to 4 months to regrow their feathers.

She looks pretty gross and I feel bad for her, but I guess this is just part of life.  Bird life.


Friday, October 26, 2012

Goat stealing and pneumonia

We will probably never find out why the neighbors keep taking our animals, but it happen again. 

Johnathon came home one day and all three goats were missing.  He knew something was wrong because they don't leave the yard even if they get out of their pen so he went next door and found them.

They were locked in a pen that is about 20 feet by 15 feet, with 30 other goats.  He was hysterical because those goats are for meat and can be killed at any time and because the male goats were mounting our three girls.  He knows better than to call me when I'm at work but I heard something while I was teaching and checked my phone - two missed calls and seven texts from him.  I called back thinking he was dying and he told me what the problem was.

He managed to get them out of the pen and dragged and carried them back home to the pen. 

Over the next few days we built their pen higher and stronger to keep them in.

But within 24 hours the goats were all showing signs of illness.  Jenny was having coughing fits that lasted 30 seconds at a time.  Carrie had green snot and a cough and Kelly was also starting to cough.

My google searching said they had pneumonia.  Yet another illness that is deadly with goats. 

Other than having a vet come out or me having to inject them with antibiotics, my only choice was oral injections of some medicine I could get at the feed store.

Every day for five days I had to go catch the goats and force the syringe into their mouth.  Each day they got smarter and catching them became nearly impossible because they remembered all of my tricks so I was only able to get the medicine into Jenny and Kelly for three days.

Even with Carrie getting the medicine for five days, she wasn't showing signs of improvement so I finally had to call the vet.  They came out and diagnosed an upper respiratory infection in each of them and had to give each of them a shot.  I've never heard the goats scream the way they did when they got those shots, it was horrible to hear.  The vet said that the medicine does burn when it goes in but that they should only need one shot and they will be cleared up in a week.

The next day each of them had a HUGE (I'm talking baseball size - not exaggerating  where they'd gotten the shot, but I haven't heard very much coughing and they are are already eating better.  We spent an hour building the fence higher and now there is only one 10 foot section that is four feet tall, the rest is about 5.5 feet tall.

Monday, October 22, 2012

They're back

A couple days after we got the 5 guinea back (the second time) from the neighbors, I decided to try to let a couple birds out during the day.  They constantly try to stay together so I was hoping that the ones we let out wouldn't go far and I could let them back in at night. 

A few hours later they weren't anywhere to be seen.

A couple hours after that Johnathon came in saying there were FIVE birds outside the run.  Sure enough, the three "free" birds had disappeared and somehow found the 2 birds that had been missing for over a week. 

We got them all back in and we have had 7 guinea in the run ever since.

We have started letting some of them out each day.  I've found that as long as one bird is in the chicken run, the others will come back to the cage at night.

I only wish that I could tell which birds are let out each day so I can be sure they all get a chance.


Thursday, October 18, 2012

We don't want to get weeeet!

The goats have been getting out of their pen again...

The other day it was raining lightly when we got home... the goats were out, but by golly they didn't want to get wet!  Good thing our canopy was out...